~ politics for the people

‘War on Waste’ chef urges MPs to support Labour food bill

Anyone who saw Hugh’s War on Waste on BBC1 last November will know exactly why Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall is supporting Labour’s Parliamentary Bill to cut supermarket food waste.

His documentary showed that supermarkets routinely reject food they do not consider to be cosmetically attractive – driving up prices at a time when 13 million UK citizens are struggling to afford their weekly groceries, and pushing UK farmers out of business.

This Blog said then that it’s not good enough, and urges MPs of all parties to support the Bill today.

Celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has urged MPs to support a Labour bill designed to reduce supermarket food waste.

Labour’s shadow secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, Kerry McCarthy, will on Friday take her food waste (reduction) bill for its second reading in the House of Commons.

“The supermarkets need to step up and massively reduce the waste they cause in the food supply chain and that’s exactly what the food waste (reduction) bill calls on them to do,” said Fearnley-Whittingstall.

“They need to adhere to the principle that food that is fit to be eaten by people, should be eaten by people. It’s ridiculous that so much good food is going into anaerobic digestion, rather than being redistributed to people in need.”

There is another purpose for unwanted / waste food – pigswill. After the Foot and mouth outbreak in 2003?? the use of pig swill (waste food) was banned, although it was found that the source was probably swill that hadn’t been heat treated in accordance with the law. It has been estimated that 1.5 million hectares of land, including much of the Amazon Jungle clearances for soya – is now cultivated simply to feed pigs. There needs to be a whole lot of joined up thinking – including the use of what we should call “surplus food” that can be fit for human consumption, to waste food” which is of use in animal feed.

I saw this program and found it quite ridiculous the high standards that the bigger supermarkets insist upon when dealing with their suppliers, and also found it disgusting the way the suppliers were being treated too. Personally, I think that we need, as consumers, to fight back against the behaviour of these big chains, and, where we can, go local instead of shopping at these places. This isn’t an advert, but I personally shop at Aldi, and only go to the likes of Morrisons for things I can’t get at Aldi. The big supermarkets I think are just too protective of their profits (and too greedy). As Fearnley stated, who is more important, the people that sell it to us, or the people that produce it?

While i agree supermarkets are wrong it’s not just them various studies have proven customers are picky put a perfect bag of vegetables and a misshapen bag out guess what bag gets bought? Supermarkets reflect their customers ever visited a upmarket veg shop how much misshapen veg was there. Bet there was none as they also only want A1 vegetables not grade D.

So we all need to grow up a bit and except misshapen veg like when you grow your own. We all say oh yes we want all the vegetables but sadly when it’s offered it’s left on the shelves. I think it should go to community groups or for subsidized meals like meals on wheels that way it’s not wasted. Yes anamal feed is another option to stop gobbling up huge tracts of good land with more soya plantations.

Yes James, in the main, I agree with you on that one, and I appreciate what you mean by customers being a bit picky, however there are also customers that WOULD pick the misshapen stuff. I think that we do need to be educated though about quality, what is fine and what isn’t etc, and programmes like this need to be shown more often. My opinions on the big supermarkets though remain the same. Far too many large businesses/corporations are tending to put greed/money before ANYTHING else, and it’s about time they were taught a harsh lesson.

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